Arthritis, What We Know, What We Don’t And What We Need To

What causes arthritis is something which we simply don’t understand. There have been countless studies and thousands upon thousands spent in the pursuit of this fact but though we’ve made a lot of progress in the past decades we’re still not there yet. What we do know is some of the causes and exacerbating factors which can go towards raising your chances of contracting certain types of arthritis or making less advanced arthritis advance much quicker than it otherwise would.

These other causes range from things like obesity which makes more or less everything worse to over-exercising which is something you may not have expected. Anything which puts more pressure on your joints that you’d naturally expect to experience can exacerbate the condition and diet can be a massive factor too. Most chronic conditions require an element of dieting to allow them to be properly managed and arthritis is no different, arthritis diets tend to be full of anti-oxidants towards this end.

Another mystery of arthritis is who it affects. For a long time it was considered a disease of the old and you’d rarely, if ever see it in anyone under the age of 60. Now that’s simply not the case. Arthritis now affects 1 in every 1000 children and a quarter of arthritis sufferers worldwide are under the age of 60. It’s much harder to see the disease in younger people because they’re often aching from exercise or, in kids, collisions but it can be much more damaging in the young who have more to lose in terms of mobility.
Can you imagine having arthritis from aged two and knowing that you’ll have it forever? Hopefully, given enough time and resources and permanent solution will be found for arthritis but until then, scientists and researchers are working on ways of making it easier for arthritic patients to manage and live with their condition.